We made it to Abbeville!

Thanks for all the prayers for speed as we pushed it hard this week to make it in time for a wedding. We arrived safely in Abbeville on Thursday afternoon around 4:30 p.m.

Here we are, rolling in Bethany's parents' driveway in Abbeville!

Our trip from Nashville should have been about 390 miles, but alas, our Alabama map failed us more than once. Unfortunately, it was not unusual for a road to be named one thing on the map and named something else on the road. For example, leaving Clayton, we needed to catch County Road 53. We rode past a County Road 43, thinking we must be close, but went on about another 3.5 miles before pulling off to ask someone. Wouldn’t you know that County Road 43 turns into 53? Seems like that kind of information would be indicated on the map. So, for all our missed turns and wrong turns, we ended up putting in about 435 miles, which makes for our highest mileage week by far! We did more than 70 miles almost every day, when before we had been averaging about 60-65.

On the bright side, once we got into our home state, we never had to cook dinner again! Someone extended kindness to us each night. On Sunday, we stopped at a church and instead of letting us camp outside, our new friend Don put us up in the Family Life Building (with showers!), and took us to a country buffet for dinner! On Tuesday night we were in Alex City, and our good friend Julie McGowin made the 40-minute drive from Auburn just to bring us a home-cooked meal… which was delicious! God’s provision has affirmed to us over and over again that He is the One who has called us to this, and He is the One who will take care of us.

So, there was no "Welcome to Alabama" sign for us to pose in front of... we had to make do with the "Borderline Road" sign, which was in fact the state border between AL & TN.

Now we’re looking forward to a fun wedding weekend with friends and family. We head to Atlanta on Sunday, we’ll be taking our bikes apart and packing them up on Monday, then our flight to Guatemala City leaves on Tuesday! Our time in the U.S. has been great. We’re glad we started in familiar territory to adjust to our new life on the road. But we’re also excited about what the next chapter holds. We’ll be in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, for a few weeks in language school before we take off to ride to Panama. Please continue to keep us in your prayers as we enter a new culture and begin another season of adjusting. And stay tuned for more updates… we’re not entirely sure what our Internet situation will look like in Central America, but we’ll be posting when we can!